How long monarch butterflies live

A female usually lays between and eggs over a two- to five-week period. After a few days, the eggs hatch into larvae, otherwise known as caterpillars in the moth and butterfly world. They only eat milkweed, which is why the female laid her eggs on milkweed leaves in the first place.

The caterpillars eat their fill for about two weeks, and then they spin protective cases around themselves to enter the pupa stage , which is also called "chrysalis. Monarch butterflies do different things depending on when they complete their metamorphosis. The poison comes from their diet. Milkweed itself is toxic, but monarchs have evolved not only to tolerate it, but to use it to their advantage by storing the toxins in their bodies and making themselves poisonous to predators, such as birds.

In the east, only monarchs that emerge in late summer or early fall make the annual migration south for the winter. Some migrate up to 3, miles. There, they huddle together on oyamel fir trees to wait out the winter. Once the days start growing longer again, they begin to move back north, stopping somewhere along the route to lay eggs. Then the new generation continues farther north and stops to lay eggs. The process may repeat over four or five generations before the monarchs have reached Canada again.

Western monarchs head to the California coast for the winter, stopping at one of several hundred known spots along the coast to wait out the cold. When spring comes, they disperse across California and other western states. How do monarchs make such a long journey? They use the sun to stay on course, but they also have a magnetic compass to help them navigate on cloudy days.

A special gene for highly efficient muscles gives them an advantage for long-distance flight. Conservation groups have petitioned the U. Western monarchs have declined by more than 99 percent since the s. Eastern monarchs have declined by an estimated 80 percent. The disappearance of milkweed is a major reason for their population decline.

Milkweed, which is the only place monarchs will lay their eggs and the only food caterpillars will eat, used to grow in and around agricultural crops. The systematic removal of milkweed from fields in recent years, as well as increased use of herbicides and mowing alongside roads and ditches, has significantly reduced the amount of milkweed available.

Climate change is also a concern for a number of reasons. Monarchs are very sensitive to temperature and weather changes, so climate change may affect biological processes, such as knowing when to reproduce and to migrate. As adults, monarchs feed on nectar from a wide range of blooming native plants, including milkweed. Monarchs lay their eggs on milkweed, their only caterpillar host plant.

It takes three to five days for the egg to hatch. After hatching and consuming their empty egg case, monarch caterpillars feed exclusively on milkweed. The caterpillars grow and molt several times over roughly a two-week period and then form a chrysalis in which they undergo metamorphosis. After approximately another two weeks within the chrysalis, they emerge as adult butterflies. Most adult monarchs only live for a few weeks, searching for food in the form of flower nectar, for mates, and for milkweed on which to lay their eggs.

The last generation that hatches in late summer delays sexual maturity and undertakes a spectacular fall migration, one of the few insects to do so. This migratory generation can live upward of eight months. Around March, the overwintering monarchs begin their journey north. Once migration begins, monarchs become sexually mature and mate.

The females begin their search for milkweed plants on which to lay eggs. After mating and egg-laying, the adult butterflies die and the northward migration is continued by their offspring. It takes three to five generations to repopulate the rest of the United States and southern Canada until the final generation of the year hatches and does the return journey to the overwintering grounds.

The monarch migration is one of the greatest phenomena in the natural world. Monarchs know the correct direction to migrate even though the individuals that migrate have never made the journey before. A single monarch can travel hundreds or even thousands of miles.

The monarch population has declined by approximately 90 percent since the s. Monarchs face habitat loss and fragmentation in the United States and Mexico.

Pesticides are also a danger. Herbicides kill both native nectar plants where adult monarchs feed, as well as the milkweed their caterpillars need as host plants. Insecticides kill the monarchs themselves. Climate change alters the timing of migration as well as weather patterns, posing a risk to monarchs during migration and while overwintering. The U. One easy way to help monarchs is to participate in the National Wildlife Federation's Garden for Wildlife program by planting a pesticide-free monarch habitat garden filled with native milkweed and nectar plants.

North America has several dozen native milkweed species, with at least one naturally found in any given area. Use these regional guides to the best native nectar plants and milkweed for monarchs in your area.

Listed plants are based on documented monarch visitation, and bloom during the times of year when monarchs are present, are commercially available, and are hardy in natural growing conditions for each region. You can get information about additional butterfly and moth host plant species native to your zip code using the Native Plant Finder. Planting locally native species is the best option for helping monarchs because monarchs coevolved with native plants and their life cycles are in sync with each other.

In the last decade tropical milkweed Asclepias curassavica , a plant not native to the United States, has become an increasingly popular way to attract monarchs in garden settings. Tropical milkweed is ornamental and easy to grow, and has become one of the most available milkweed species in nursery trade. Monarchs happily lay eggs on it. Despite these qualities, when planted in southern states and California, tropical milkweed can encourage monarchs to skip their migration and continue to breed through the winter, potentially putting them at risk for disease and other complications that they would have avoided by migrating.

The National Wildlife Federation encourages planting native milkweed and cutting back tropical milkweed in the fall to encourage monarch migration. In addition to the Garden for Wildlife program, National Wildlife Federation campaigns such as Butterfly Heroes engages kids and families in bringing awareness to the declining monarch population and gets them involved in helping monarchs and other pollinators.

Through the Mayors' Monarch Pledge , cities and municipalities are committing to creating habitat and educating citizens about how they can make a difference at home for monarchs.

Fifth instar Monarch Butterfly caterpillars have quite a fancy pattern of black, white, and green-yellow stripes, with long black tentacles and white-dotted black legs. For North American caterpillars they are very large, 2. They can now eat a small milkweed leaf in minutes, or a big milkweed leaf, big enough to fold into a roomy case around them, in less than a day.

After a few days at this stage they finally fill up, stop eating, and look for a place to pupate. Monarch Butterflies do not spin cocoons. They spin a little mat of silk on the underside of a branch, then hang upside down by their hindmost pair of legs the claspers in a J position. Within a day the striped skin falls off, exposing a green chrysalis that looks more like a bead than like a living animal. At last the adult butterfly crawls out of the chrysalis.

Pulling itself slowly out of this last discarded skin, then waiting and pumping its wet, crumpled wings, are necessary parts of its development. After emergence, Monarch Butterflies usually wait up to twelve hours, or more, before their wings are ready for flight. Monarch Butterfly wings will carry the butterfly through anywhere from fifteen to fifty days of adult life.

Between March and May, this generation of Monarchs will flit about looking for unused milkweed plants where their offspring will find adequate food. Many, though not all, will move north, following the weather into the Northern States. Monarchs who hatch in April and May go through the same stages as those who hatch in February and March. Between May and July, some of them will lay eggs on milkweed plants in Canada.

Monarchs who hatch in June and July go through the same stages as the earlier generations. As they fly, in July through September, slightly shorter days and cooler nights motivate them to move southward. Butterflies who hatched in Canada usually lay eggs in the Northern States.

In the Middle Atlantic States, some people like to prune back milkweed plants where Monarch Butterfly eggs are not hatching in July, so these plants will have fresh new leaves for the fourth generation of Monarch Butterfly caterpillars to eat after hatching in August or September.

Monarchs who hatch in August and September begin to fly in September and October. This is the generation that may fly across the Gulf of Mexico. West of the Rocky Mountains, a less hazardous migration leads to Monarch Butterfly groves on the California coast.